


I See The Future

by kastron (decidueye)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Leverage, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Brief mention of Past Abuse, F/M, Gen, past meeting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 11:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decidueye/pseuds/kastron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Ward's first mission he gets to work with the most legendary group of Agent's to ever grace SHIELD's headquarters. But what does this mean for the rest of them? Written for Ultra_fic at the Leveragexchange secret santa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I See The Future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ultra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/gifts).



> I hope you like this, Ultra! I tried to incorporate as many of your prompts as I could, and this was the result ^^

Ward grimaced as he sat on the examination table, hissing when the nurse went to remove his shirt. The knife had missed his vital organs, but had gone in deep, and its removal seemed to have only made the pain worse. Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, Ward sighed.

“I thought you said that she was _just_ a thief.”

“She is.” Sitwell replied, moving further into Ward’s line of vision. Ward gave him a cold stare, and Sitwell shrugged. “Well, mostly. I suppose that’s the problem.” He shoved a clipboard into Ward’s hands – great, the paperwork couldn’t even wait until after he’d recovered from being stabbed – and Ward frowned.

“Maybe it’s the anaesthetic but I’m not following.”

“She’s just a thief.” Sitwell repeated. “Just. A thief. Nothing else, and that’s what makes her dangerous. We may as well be calling her The Thief.”

“I’m starting to think that my mission briefing was on the wrong file.” Ward groused, moving his hand to help the nurse apply the dressing. ‘ _Low priority_ ’, you said. ‘ _Easy job, in and out, perfect for a first mission’_ , you said.”

“We were misinformed. You know how things are.” Sitwell paused, opening a StarkPad and flipping through the files again. “Looks like we’re going to have to bring in the big guns.”

Ward sat up, ignoring the sharp pain in his abdomen and the frustrated warning from the nurse. “What? No! This is my assignment. You can’t just send me back to the Academy after I’ve gone through all this trouble – I got stabbed for this!” He hesitated – that probably didn’t help his case. “I mean, I’ll be recovered soon, so I’m sure I can –”

Sitwell raised a hand to silence the agent. “Relax, bambi. I didn’t say you were off the case. We’ll need your intel.”  
“Then…”

“How do you feel about working your first mission with the Horsemen?”

**

Ward had heard many rumours about the Horsemen in his four years at the academy. They were the most fearsome weapons that SHIELD had at their disposal, four agents who could dismantle an army without even blinking. His seniors had said all kinds of things: they were gods; they had superpowers; they were robots created by Tony Stark and one day they’d turn against SHIELD and take down all that they stood for.  
What he hadn’t heard (and what he kicked himself for even assuming, God, he shouldn’t have), was that two of the Horsemen weren’t, in fact, men.

Agents May, Spencer, Barton and Romanoff all had reputations of their own – Ward had never imagined what could happen when you put them together. He didn’t have to anymore, though, what with being introduced to them, still fragile from his injury and conspicuously inexperienced. Ward shrank, coughed, and then held out his hand for no one to shake.

“This is the guy they sent after her?” Romanoff asked, shaped eyebrows furrowing in confusion as she sized him up. Ward fondly looked back on the week before, when being called out for his first mission had made him feel like the most capable agent in the field. Barton (and oh God, it’s Hawkeye, Hawkeye who recruited him, Hawkeye who listened to his tragic backstory and _understood_ , who’d offered him a simple _’brothers suck, don’t they?’_ and his hand) elbowed her playfully, because he clearly had a death wish.

“Give him a break, he’s all shiny and new.” He chastised her, and she rolled her eyes. “Besides. They were misinformed.”  
Somehow, Barton’s gesture of support wasn’t exactly reassuring. Ward swallowed nervously.

“I’ll try not to get in your way.” He said. “I mean, it’s going to be a learning experience just observing you, so –”

“Observing?” Spencer scoffed. “Sorry, man, you’re not getting off that lightly. You’ve got all of our intel – you’re going to have to go the whole way with us.” Ward almost made to protest, but the look Spencer was giving him closed his mouth before it had opened.

“Right.” He nodded, wringing his hands together. “Of course.”

“You’ll be fine.” May told him, making eye contact for the first time and gesturing to a seat at the conference table. “In any case, before we get to that, we have to be briefed. Tell us everything you know about this Thief.”

**

Ward crouched low behind the warehouse fence, biting his tongue to keep himself from saying anything embarrassing. At either side of him, Spencer and Romanoff were scanning their surroundings.

“She’s in there?” Spencer asked, voice low, and Ward nodded.

“Yeah. That’s where the signal was traced to, and when I tried to get in…” He shuddered and pulled a face. “I mean, who the hell finds a spaceship – a spaceship that’s on _fire_ , no less – and decides to break into it anyway?”

“You’d think that would have set off some alarm bells.” Romanoff conceded. “Enough to not send a rookie in, anyway.”

“ _Ouch_.” Barton’s voice crackled over the comms. Ward agreed. “ _Rookie’s got ears, you know_.”  
Romanoff huffed, and Spencer’s shoulders moved against Ward’s as he rolled his eyes. “Come on, guys. We already know this girl’s twenty pounds of crazy – now ain’t the time to be slacking off. You got a lock on us, May, Barton?”

“ _Following your every move, sweetie._ ” Barton crowed, and Spencer groaned.

“Let’s just go.”  
Spencer gestured with two fingers towards the warehouse door, and the three agents crept towards it. Digging a scanner from her kit, Romanoff attached it to the door, generating a heat mapped view of the interior.

“Does she have a whole bedroom set up in there?” Spencer asked, incredulous. Ward shrugged.

“I only got a glimpse last time, but seems so. She’s keeping the 0-8-4 underneath her pillow, too.”

“Special.” Spencer groaned. “We’ll need a distraction.”

“On it.” Romanoff replied, vanishing. Ward blinked and took a deep breath.

“Take it we’re going to be the ones doing the stealing, then.”

“Stealing from a thief.” Spencer replied, and then grinned wolfishly. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“Fun.” Ward repeated weakly, startling as a series of loud bangs rang out from the back of the warehouse – Romanoff’s distraction, probably. “Right.”

The pair watched the screen, waiting for the thief to move towards Romanoff before slipping inside. Nothing much had changed from the last time Ward was in there: the warehouse was mostly empty, but three thin walls in the centre marked out what could almost be an IKEA showroom. Ward’s abdomen gave a painful twinge in anticipation.

“What the…” Spencer uttered, before shaking his head. “C’mon, let’s go.”

Ward could hear the sounds of fighting in the back as they crept towards the warehouse’s centre, Spencer indicating for him to keep watch as he rifled through the bed.

“What’s this thing look like again?”

“A thin, gold band, apparently. I didn’t get to see it though so –”

“It’s not here.”

Ward turned to face Spencer, blinking. “What?”

“I said it’s not here.” Spencer growled. “Your intel’s bogus, rookie.”

“She must have moved it…” Ward muttered, turning fully towards the bed and making to walk towards it. “I could have sworn – Agh!”

A flash of light came from behind Ward and he found himself in the air, landing with a hard thud on the warehouse floor and rolling several metres before slamming against the wall. Vision blurred and wound aching, he turned over, roughly making out the shapes of Spencer and one other figure by the bed.

_Where’s Romanoff?_

“Well, this seems pretty fun!” A chirpy voice came from the other figure – the thief, Ward recognised – and she gestured to her wrist. “Don’t really know what it does, but you have to find out by doing, right?”

Spencer remained still, position defensive, and Ward heard him sigh. “Or, you know, you could just _not touch it_.”

“And what would be the point in that?” The thief asked, head tilting. Spencer’s posture was tense, shoulders hunched, and Ward couldn’t tell if he was preparing for attack or trying to retain his patience.

“Look, that doesn’t belong to you.” Spencer began, reaching for his badge. “It’s dangerous, and it needs to be examined by people who know what they’re dealing with. I belong to the organisation who has these people – I need to collect it for them.”

“You mean steal it from me.” The thief pointed out, and Spencer laughed.

“You got a problem with stealing, thief?”

The thief shrugged. “No. I mean, that would be ridiculous. But you’re wrong. This is mine. It spoke to me.”  
Spencer paused, and Ward ran through the manual in his head. Objects that had some kind of hormonal or addictive property were rare, and handling those who had been touched by them was a very complicated procedure. Legendary capabilities aside, Ward wasn’t sure that Spencer was the ideal person for this. Ward watched as Spencer deliberately relaxed his pose.

“It did?” He asked, tone almost gentle. The thief nodded.

“It’s going to help me build a family, it told me. It said it could lead me to my future.”

“And you believed it?” Spencer was trying to hold back his scepticism, Ward could tell, but it wasn’t really working. Ward struggled to keep his head up, trying to focus on the conversation in an attempt to stay conscious.

“Sure I did. Things don’t lie. People do.”

“That’s true. But do you really thing that things can see into the future? That seems kind of impossible to me.”

The thief blinked. “A space ship seemed impossible. A shiny trinket giving me the power to throw that guy across the room seemed impossible. Why can’t it tell the future, too? Besides, it’s already started.”

Spencer stopped short at the thief’s smug tone. Black spots appeared in the corner of Ward’s eyes. Behind the thief, he thought he saw a glimpse of red hair.

“What the hell does that mean?” Spencer asked.

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

The red haired blur moved quickly, and Ward heard the sound of a Taser as he passed out.

**

Ward awoke in the clinic with a nurse dabbing at his wounds, disapproving look already in place. He groaned.

“My only two missions so far have ended with me injured and unsuccessful.” He commented, and the nurse hummed, not listening. “I’m going to make a great agent, aren’t I?”

“Probably.” Ward jerked his head to see Barton and Spencer standing in the corner. Barton was grinning, and Spencer had his arms folded; he’d probably been dragged there. “Honestly, Rookie, you’d better get used to this, because missions end here more often than not.”

“Even for you?” He asked, disbelieving.

Spencer replied this time, gruff. “Especially for us. Not that this mission was unsuccessful, by the way. We got her.”

Ward supposed that he should feel pleased at that, but really, it wasn’t anything to do with him. “What happened?” He asked instead.

“We got the device back and ran her through counselling. She’s getting treatment, now – the only way to cut the bond was to make her forget.”

“So she won’t remember anything?”

Spencer shook his head. “Nothing. Not even stabbing you.”

Ward nodded, but didn’t say anything, pulling himself up on the table and chewing his lip thoughtfully. Barton caught the expression and shot  
him a sympathetic look. “Bit of an anti-climax, huh?”

“You could say that. I thought something more was going to happen – she seemed to think that she was connected to Spencer, thought there’d be a bit of a struggle.”

Spencer tensed. “She was being manipulated.” He said abruptly, turning to leave the room. “Things like that happen all the time, Rookie. There’s nothing magical about this technology.”

**

“We have another mission, Coulson?” Ward made his way into the conference room where the rest of the team had already gathered. The room was silent, and he took one look in May’s direction, focusing on her conflicted expression, and readied himself. “What is it?”

“Just a check-up, really.” Coulson replied, though he didn’t seem convinced. “One of our old agents has allied himself with a team of con artists – we have to make sure he isn’t sharing information he shouldn’t be.”

Coulson gestured towards the screen, and Agent Spencer’s image came up, captured on CCTV with his alleged team mates. Ward took the scene in, not understanding why there was cause for alarm – Eliot had left SHIELD peacefully, after all, until he caught sight of a blonde ponytail.

“Is that - ?”

“Yes.” May replied shortly. “It seems that Spencer has teamed up with the Thief.”


End file.
